That wouldn’t do.

I made him another, delivering it to him with a smile that was all teeth.

I set the second drink next to the first.

He glanced at them, then at me.

“Oh I’m sorry.  Did you need me to put a nipple on that?”

He laughed.

“You used to drink like a man,” I told him, undeterred.

He finished off the first one, eyes on me all the while.

That was another thing about him.  He rarely backed down from a challenge.

I wish I could say it was one of the many things about him that I hated, but frustratingly it wasn’t.  It had saved me when we were kids.  Who knows what added hell I’d have gone through without his cursed stubbornness.

I took the empty glass away, intending to refill it immediately.

When I returned, the second drink was nearly finished.

I set down a third without a word.

I kept an eye on him, delivering a fourth as he was finishing up the third.  And then a fifth.  And so on.

“You did this on purpose,” Dante said to me.  Even when he was blitzed, his speech was barely slurred.  But I knew the signs.  He was trashed in the extreme.

Hit scored.  Another point for me.

I stayed busy for the duration of the flight, and Dante stayed drunk.

We were deplaning when I realized he might not even be able to make it off unassisted.

Everyone had deplaned and he was still swaying in his chair.

“What should we do with him?” Demi, the youngest of our crew, asked.  She was a sweet little thing, and somehow on her, sweet didn’t annoy me.

The cabin crew was up near the door, ready to go, the pilots waiting for us in the jet bridge.

All that was keeping us was The Bastard.

“He’s hot,”  Farrah, who worked the back galley, added.  “Like, fuckhot hot.”

“He’s too drunk,” Demi pointed out.  “That’d be rape.”

“I wasn’t being literal,” Farrah said wryly.

“Should we call a paramedic?” Leona asked, eyeing him.  “That’s the protocol for this level of inebriation on the ground.”

I rolled my eyes.  “No.  I’ll handle the fucker.”

With an annoyed sigh I headed toward him.  “Flight’s over,” I told him, voice stern.  “You need to get your drunk ass off this plane.”

At that he staggered to his feet.

“We still need to talk,” he pronounced slowly.

“If you can’t get yourself off this plane unassisted, we’re calling a paramedic for you,” I told him coldly.

Yes, I had done this to him.  Didn’t mean I’d help him.

He nodded jerkily and started to move past me.

I stiffened as he squeezed by me in the aisle.

He put his drunk face into my hair and inhaled.

My hands clenched into fists, but he moved away before I could do anything productive, like, say, punch him in the face.

I grabbed his things out of the overhead bin.  At least he hadn’t brought much.  One small carryon that didn’t weigh a thing.

“We divided up your bags,” Leona called out to me.  “You get that, and we’ve got your stuff covered.”

The girls were starting to file off the plane directly behind Dante the Drunk.

I was the last out of the jet way.  Dante was already parked in a chair by the time I caught up to the rest of them.

“What should we do with him?” the captain asked me.  As the lead flight attendant, he was my responsibility.

I rolled Dante’s bag over to him, perching it beside him.  He was staring at me, but I never even glanced at him directly.

I turned back to my expectant crew.  “We leave him.  He’s a big boy.  He can fend for himself.”

I got some strange looks, but everyone was ready to be done for the day, so no one argued.

“You won this round!” Dante called to my retreating back.  “But I’ll find you again!”

I was at the back of our crew, and I didn’t break stride as I held up my hand, waving goodbye to him with one expressive finger.

CHAPTER

THREE

“He’s more myself than I am.  

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

~Emily Brontë

PAST

The first time we ever really talked to each other was right outside of the vice principal’s office in fourth grade.

We’d both just been busted for fighting.

It wasn’t the first time we’d met, or even the first time we’d been forced to spend time together, but I remembered very clearly that it was the first time I realized we were alike.  That there was another kid like me, someone who could relate to all of the rage, all of the insecurity and anger I carried around with me every second of the day.

On the outside, we were opposites in almost every way.

I was skinny.  He was strapping.

My clothes were too small and threadbare; his fit him perfect, and looked so expensive to my young, untrained eye that I’d have been afraid to touch them with my grubby hands.

Even his hair was perfect.  Not short like the other boys, but not long either.  Styled with gel and parted on the side.  No other boys had hair like him, like a grownup tended to it every single day before school.

Mine was a long, tangled mess that I hadn’t brushed in days.

He smelled like soap, fancy soap, something spicy and pleasant.

I just smelled.

He was filthy rich.

I was dirt poor.

But we did have a few, crucial things that matched:  Bad attitudes and worse tempers.

I swear I was born with a chip on my shoulder.  Full of more hard things than soft ones.  And so when there was a soft thing I was doubly defensive of it.  Willing to fight for it.  Hard and often.

Willing to pull that stupid girl’s hair until I ripped great big hunks of it out to make her sorry for pointing it out.

I looked down at my hands.  I was still holding some of the long blonde strands, and I hadn’t even known it.

Glancing around, I gathered it all into a ball and slipped it behind my chair.

Like it mattered, at this point.  I’d already been busted.

And I wasn’t sorry.  The little brat had deserved it.

But boy was I in for it this time.    My grandma would make me sorry I’d lost my temper again, there was no doubt.

“Were you fightin’ again, too?” I asked Dante.

We rarely spoke to each other.  I had mixed feelings about him.  My grandma worked for his mom and he’d always been standoffish to me and, well, everyone.

His family had more money than anyone else around.  I figured maybe he thought we were all beneath him.

I was pretty sure he was probably a snob.

He grunted in answer.

“Why?” I continued.  I felt a rare burst of friendliness towards him.  This wasn’t the first time I’d seen him get busted for fighting.

It made me like him, maybe even respect him a little bit.  I got caught fighting a lot too.  So much so I was almost positive I’d get kicked out of school for it this time.

He shrugged, not looking at me.

“Were they makin’ fun of you for bein’ rich again?” I asked him, watching his face.

He shrugged.

“Were they makin’ fun of your nice hair again?” I tried, making my voice soft so he knew I wasn’t trying to knock him.

He finally looked at me.  The rage in his bright eyes made something swell in my chest.

I was pretty sure he was mad at me for saying that, but that look, those eyes, the way it made me feel, was thrilling.  Magical.  Like I’d just discovered something to do.  Some bright new adventure.  Some task that gave me purpose.

I smiled at him.  “I like your hair.  I think it looks really nice.  Those little shits,” I was proud of myself for pulling out a good curse word for him, “just wish they had your hair.  Wish they had anything of yours.”